MONTREAL -- Arturo Gatti's will was changed just three weeks before the ex-boxing champ died, his brother Fabrizio confirmed Sunday.

"It's the truth," he said when asked during a brief phone call for confirmation of reports the former fighter had bequeathed everything to his wife, Amanda Rodrigues.

Family friend and sports journalist Jeremy Filosa told The Canadian Press that on June 17, Gatti and Rodrigues changed the ex-boxer's will, leaving his full inheritance in her name.

"Everything that Arturo Gatti owns -- past, present and future -- goes to his wife. Nothing goes to his children or mother or brothers or sisters," said Filosa.

Gatti's widow was also named executor of his will and stands to receive $1 million from a life insurance policy, Filosa said, adding the family was made aware of the changes on Friday.

Brazilian police said Friday that Gatti's death was being ruled a suicide -- a conclusion rejected by Gatti's friends and family, who asked a Quebec coroner to re-examine the body, buried July 20 in Montreal.

Rodrigues was released Friday after having been held for nearly three weeks in a Brazilian jail on suspicion of murder.

She looked very happy in the photo I saw of her leaving the gaol. I would have thought that she would have been more, er, "emotional" but no...so you have to wonder...still.

Michael Baden. I read his book some years ago and have seen Autopsy. Certainly he's someone to listen to - particularly where there may be foul-play.

The scenario of suicide may not be outside the bounds of reason if Arturo were in a highly emotional state and besotted with his wife. OTOH, perhaps she would know this and play on it. She had a lot to gain - that's clear at least. For Gatti to exclude his children seems very, very odd.

Looks pretty clear (and damn sad) to me - let's see what some honourable judge is going to say...

CLICK & WATCH: I got BULLSHIDO ON TV!!!
"Bruce Lee sucks because I slammed my nuts with nunchucks trying to do that stupid **** back in the day. I still managed to have two kids. I forgive you Bruce." - by Vorpal

Let The Games Begin..

The court battle for Arturo Gatti's estate has begun..apparently there are two wills - both of which differ greatly as to how his estate should be tended to:

MONTREAL -- The widow of late boxing champion Arturo Gatti has been awarded $40,000 to cover legal fees and child-care costs, but her fight with his family over his sizable fortune looks set to go the distance.

The sum falls far short of the $150,000 advance that Amanda Rodrigues was seeking from Gatti's estate.

And in another blow to the 23-year-old Brazilian native, Superior Court Justice Paul Chaput concluded in his ruling Thursday that custody of the couple's dog is not an urgent matter for the time being.

As prosecutors in Brazil prepared to analyze new evidence in the suspicious death of boxer Arturo Gatti, his childhood friend and business partner in Montreal painted a disturbing picture of the welterweight champion's last few months as a battered husband, repeatedly subject to verbal abuse and sucker-punched by his wife.

Testifying in Superior Court, where a battle over the dead man's $6-million estate is playing out, Antonio Rizzo replayed some of the incidents he says he witnessed between Gatti and his wife, Brazilian national Amanda Rodrigues, from the time the couple moved to Montreal from New Jersey in May 2007 to the boxer's fateful trip to Brazil in 2009.

Gatti was found dead July 11, 2009, in a vacation home in Brazil, with a purse string found near his body. Authorities, after questioning and releasing Rodrigues, ruled it was a suicide. But the Gatti family doesn't believe that version of events and want Gatti's will - changed three weeks before his death to leave everything to Rodrigues - annulled.

With Gatti's elderly mother and brother on one side of the courtroom and Rodrigues on the other, Rizzo told the court on Thursday the couple was always fighting. And as the months wore on, Gatti became more afraid of losing his infant son, and of what Rodrigues might do back in her native country.

"She wants me to sign a Brazilian passport for him. But if she takes my son I'll never see him again," Rizzo testified, relaying what Gatti had told him.

Rizzo, who met Gatti when he was about 8 - around the time he began boxing - repeatedly apologized to the court for the language he used when relaying Rodrigues's words.

He described a particularly shocking scene he witnessed one night at the couple's penthouse on Jarry St. in St. Léonard, one of 82 condos the two men invested in and built together after Gatti retired from boxing in 2007. Rodrigues, naked and screaming, hit Gatti on the head with a broom before smashing crystal all around him and ordering him to clean it up, Rizzo said.

" 'You're a loser, the only thing you're good at is bleeding, your mother's a whore, your sisters are prostitutes,' " Rizzo said, before Rodrigues's lawyer objected for the umpteenth time that Rizzo's testimony was hearsay and not admissible. The judge said she would take his objections under advisement.

Rizzo testified that his friend, despite the last will and testament presented to the court by a notary on Tuesday, would never have agreed to leave everything to his wife.

Three months before his death, Gatti complained to Rizzo that his wife was pushing him to change his will.

According to Rizzo, it was after several more conversations, including one where Gatti admits to his friend that he got a black eye from being "sucker-punched" by his wife, that Gatti asked him for help finding a divorce lawyer.

Authorities in Brazil announced Thursday they would take a second look at their investigation into Gatti's death, and possibly order more investigation, after a report was made public on Wednesday concluding the boxer's death was a homicide: After a 10-month investigation a team of U.S. experts concluded Gatti was hit over the head and then strangled.

In Montreal, Rodrigues's lawyer, Pierre-Hugues Fortin, said as far as he was concerned, there was no new probe into Gatti's death in Brazil, and the privately funded 300-page report, commissioned by Gatti's former manager, lacked credibility.

"My client disagrees with the findings," he told reporters outside the courtroom. "There are a lot of unanswered questions."